Unions and what they are doing to our country

[mtraininjax]

Great article by Mort Zuckerman of US News and World Report. Thanks to Bert Ralston for posting on FB.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/mzuckerman/2010/05/14/the-crippling-price-of-public-employee-unions.html

A taste:

The American public feels it is drowning in red ink. It is dismayed and even outraged at the burgeoning national deficits, unbalanced state and local budgets, and accounting that often masks the extent of indebtedness. There is a mounting sense that taxpayers are being taken for an expensive ride by public sector unions. The extraordinary benefits the unions have secured for their members are going to be harder and harder to pay.


The political backlash has energized the Tea Party activists, put incumbents at risk in both parties, and already elected fiscal conservatives such as Republican Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey. Over the next fiscal year, the states are looking at deficits approaching hundreds of billions of dollars. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, estimates that this coming year alone states will face an aggregate shortfall of $180 billion. In some states the budget gap is more than 30 percent. The result is a crowding out of the state role as the supporter of adequate infrastructure, education, and healthcare.

How did we get into such a mess? States have always had to cope with volatility in the size and composition of their populations. Now we have shrinking tax bases caused by recession and extra costs imposed on states to pay for Medicaid in the federal healthcare program. The straw (well, more like an iron beam) that breaks the camel's back is the unfunded portions of state pension plans, healthcare, and other retirement benefits promised to public sector employees at a time when federal government assistance to states is fallingâ€"down by roughly half in the next fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

[buckethead]

I find such speech to be seditious.

We need stricter controls on this type of opinion peddling.

[urbanlibertarian]

Here's an example of how one city council member in San Diego proposes to solve this problem and it's completely voluntary for city employees: http://reason.tv/video/show/fixing-san-diego-a-conversatio

[konstantconsumer]

How awful.  Allowing workers to have pensions, health care, overtime pay and access to 401Ks.  These communists should be taken out back and shot.

[LPBrennan]

Mi9ght be a good idea for SD to actually read something before commenting. Zuckerman's main thrust concerned government unions. We have reached a point where government employees have salaries and benefits far beyond many of their private sector counterparts. Unions for government employees is an unpleasant outgrowth of the Civil Service laws of the Nineteenth Century, whose original intent was to protect the appointees of one p[arty when the other party took power. There is much to be said for the Jacksonian spoils system, if for no other reason of assuring a certain degree of accountability for government employees in the performance of their duties.

At least in a private company, a union may perform some useful functions of representing the worker in his "struggle" against the evil capitalist, which SD apparently thinks is the guy with the silk hat on the Monopoly board, or the way he was depicted in cartoons in "Pravda" of yore. Private industry at least produces something withe public can buy, or not, as they choose.

But government unions are struggling against... us. And themselves. Which gives us the situation faced in many Western countries (Greece, among them), where government workers represent a larger and larger voting bloc, and elected officials- seeking always to be re-elected- seek to buy those blocs with with large salaries and benefits paid for by... someone else. Us.

And what happens when we run out of money?

[JC]

Mi9ght be a good idea for SD to actually read something before commenting. Zuckerman's main thrust concerned government unions. We have reached a point where government employees have salaries and benefits far beyond many of their private sector counterparts. Unions for government employees is an unpleasant outgrowth of the Civil Service laws of the Nineteenth Century, whose original intent was to protect the appointees of one p[arty when the other party took power. There is much to be said for the Jacksonian spoils system, if for no other reason of assuring a certain degree of accountability for government employees in the performance of their duties.

At least in a private company, a union may perform some useful functions of representing the worker in his "struggle" against the evil capitalist, which SD apparently thinks is the guy with the silk hat on the Monopoly board, or the way he was depicted in cartoons in "Pravda" of yore. Private industry at least produces something withe public can buy, or not, as they choose.

But government unions are struggling against... us. And themselves. Which gives us the situation faced in many Western countries (Greece, among them), where government workers represent a larger and larger voting bloc, and elected officials- seeking always to be re-elected- seek to buy those blocs with with large salaries and benefits paid for by... someone else. Us.

And what happens when we run out of money?

So wait, let me understand what you are saying here, and please tell me if I am wrong.  You are saying that winning wage and benefit increases is ok as long as its done in a way that you see fit, is that correct?  You are also saying that Americans should not have the right to free associate with whomever they choose and speak about whatever they want as they see fit, is that also correct?

[finehoe]

Private industry at least produces something withe public can buy, or not, as they choose.

I didn't choose to cover AIGs losses when the public stopped buying their BS, yet it happened anyway.

[LPBrennan]

Amazing how no one really pays attention to a rant. Logic hurts, eh?

Yes- I am opposed to government "unions" on the face of it. If you can't see the inherent conflict in them... well, I wonder what you do see. The civil service bureaucracy has become the most powerful branch of our government, because Congress has grown too lazy to legislate: It is easier to create a massive agency to handle the running of things, and the enabling legislation usually lets it set up its own rules. Congress has "oversight" but who is overseeing the hundreds of thousands of regulations produced annually? We are drawing ever closer to a system in which more and more of our lives falls under a regulation, a license, a permit... when a damp area in your property can be identified as a "wetland" because certain plants grow there sometimes, and more and more people need to work for government to administer this load. These workers will belong to a government union. And there is no opting out.

When and if cuts must be made, the government union swings into action to protect its members- and the union's income from dues- by lobbying legislators to moderate the cuts. Or forgo them. The people who ostensibly work for us also vote for their bosses. That system bothers me. A lot. Quis ipsos custodiet...

SD- I can easily confuse your general attitude on capitalism with the cartoon figures in Pravda. I used to buy it whenever I was passing through Washington years ago- it and Izvestia were about thirty-five cents at a news stand in Georgetown- an obviously subsidized price by the good ol' Soviets. They were quite amusing to look at. Uncle Sam was usually depicted with fangs.

For a look at how bureaucracies work, I suggest you all read C. Northcote Parkinson: Parkinson's Law; The Law and the Profits; Inlaws and Outlaws; and others. Parkinson writes well and humorously, something most of the posters here would benefit from.

[LPBrennan]

As I said, make a logical answer or or keep on with the "funny" remarks.

[LPBrennan]

One. I said there is an inherent conflict in a government union. I stated the conflict. Can you see it?

Russian imperialism? Are you unable to distinguish the Soviets from the Tsars?

As to the free market- works pretty good when it's tried. I'm not so sure what you think of it.

And seriously- read Parkinson.

[LPBrennan]

No conflict? Not looking very hard. Don't want to, I guess.

While both the Tsars and Soviets were Russians (Well, mostly) and they were both imperialists, the Tsars generally were not busily subverting governments all over the world in the attempt to bring them into one happy people's republic. The Soviets were.

The point about Pravda and Izvestia was that in the Soviet days, they were merely organs of the state or the party and- as the old Russian joke ran- there was no news in the Truth and no truth in the News. To that extant that they were hardly journalism... I assume even you can see that.

Repeating jingoism? Use the right word, not its second cousin. Soviet-era Pravda was full of it.

Why Parkinson? Well, aside from Parkinson's law (Work expands to fill the time available) there was the corollary Executives multiply subordinates and not equals- or- the rising pyramid. Parkinson gives a simple and enjoyable look into the workings of bureaucracies. His commentary is worth reading. And funny. Go ahead- it won't hurt you.

[JC]

Please explain what "value for value" is and why the word is, in its application, subjective or objective.

[JC]

Please explain what "value for value" is and why the word is, in its application, subjective or objective.

I have something of value, and I trade it for something else that I deem to be just as valuable, as does my trading partner.

Whether that be money or product or service.

Because trade is based on agreement, the values are always subjective.  Either I am willing to pay or trade this much for what you are offering or I am not.

So value being subjective means that the more powerful side, or the side with a perceived lesser need because  increased supply can artificially undervalue a good or service?

(I realize there is more to this but I am trying to get somewhere specific)

[buckethead]

Value is subjective. It is intangible.

If I set the value of my labor at $2500.00 per hour, and no one is willing to pay that, I would do well to re-evaluate.

As to the question you pose regarding two trade partners with differing bargaining positions, yes. Value does change with supply/demand variance.

Being in construction you see this as clearly as anyone. You might be about to suggest setting specific values on labor, (if I'm reading it right) but that would also be subjective, as well as arbitrary.



[edited for spellin]

[JC]

Values is subjective. It is intangible.

If I set the value of my labor at $2500.00 per hour, and no one is willing to pay that, I would do well to re-evaluate.

As to the question you pose regarding two trade partners with differing bargaining positions, yes. Value does change with supply/demand variance.

Being in construction you see this as clearly as anyone. You might be about to suggest setting specific values on labor, (if I'm reading it right) but that would also be subjective, as well as arbitrary.

I am not arguing that anyone specific should set a value on labor but unions should act as a check against the collective interest of the employing class, which is to make money and in so doing, make wages as low as possible.